To develop a national system for occupational mortality several methods are being tested or explored in collaboration with other agencies: 1) updating the Continuous Work History Sample (CWHS) of the Social Security Administration with Internal Revenue Service information on occupation and with cause of death; 2) development of a program for state vital statistics offices to code occupation and industry on the death certificate, information now generally neglected; and 3) development of a large file of subjects of past Current Population Survey samples for periodic collation with the National Death Index to produce mortality tables by occupation, industry, and other demographic variables. A mesothelioma study is underway in which the SSA is experimenting with the construction of employment histories from SSA records. This does not look promising from a cost standpoint. Efforts are continuing to obtain access to the IRS address file for medical research and to enable the SSA to create industry-of-employment cohorts for mortality studies.